A new poll just out from Franklin Pierce Univ./WBZ has McCain 37% and Romney 31% in NH.

We told you earlier about the new Rudy Giuliani ad which seems to bring the Rudy reality fully in line with Rudy parody. The ad is basically ‘vote for me or it’s a big Islamofascist whuppin’ comin’ your way! In other words, campaign Rudy has now devolved into a primal 9/11, 9/11, 9/11 scream.

But when you actually read the script, there’s something even weirder. The announcer reads (italics added) …

An enemy without borders. Hate without boundaries. A people perverted. A religion betrayed. A nuclear power in chaos. Madmen bent on creating it. Leaders assassinated. Democracy attacked …

The whole people is perverted? Depending on how you interpret the ad, Rudy’s either saying that Muslims as a people have been ‘perverted’ or the people of Pakistan are perverted.

Either way, that seems more than a little problematic.

I’m not sure ‘perverted’ is a word that Rudy really wants to be pumping into the campaign either at the moment. But there does seem to be a more serious issue here. The premise of all our anti-terrorism efforts — from the sanest variants to total-spectrum Islamofascism malarkey — is that we’re not at war with Muslims in general but with a particular breed of Islamic extremism. But this ad isn’t saying some people. It’s saying ‘a people’, i.e., all of ’em. And that seems to mean pretty clearly that the whole community is ‘perverted’.

That’s the pickle Giuliani’s New Hampshire surrogate John Deady got into last week when he said that Rudy’s mission was to send all the Muslims “back to their caves.”

You can see the ad here and the script here …

Ex-Speaker Denny Hastert (R-IL) initially failed to tell the FEC about the $147,000 he spent on lawyers in the Foley scandal. Hastert had to close down his campaign to avoid big time fines.

TPM Reader KB on the coming flufftacular …

As a Dem, I see Romney as the safest option tomorrow. Why? Because the media mancrush for McCain, should it have real reason to get going again full throttle, will be very powerful. Just check out the item Halperin has up about McCain’s event tonight. Romney, on the other hand, is sort of already damaged goods with the Russert-axis, but rank and file GOP voters may not have figured it out yet.

We who are about to fluff, salute you!

The Politico says Fred’s likely to pull the plug on his campaign after Iowa and before New Hampshire and throw his more or less non-existent support to McCain.

Ahhh, the election markets — very volatile tonight. As of right now, at Intrade, John McCain has just moved ahead of Romney and Rudy as the most likely GOP nominee.

If I were a betting man, which I’m not, I’d probably be putting my money on McCain too, though I would not be counting out Romney just yet. Not by a longshot. The Stepford Candidate is still very much in this. If Romney can hold on in Iowa, even a very embarrassing defeat (to McCain) in New Hampshire is survivable.

Rudy, not surprisingly, is dropping like a stone at both major prediction market sites.

And, as long we’re chatting. We just put the finishing touches on the TPM Iowa Caucus Scoreboard. So we hope you’ll join us tomorrow evening for live, up-to-the-minute and generally TPMified coverage of all the action until the last results are known.

We’ve got a predictions thread set up over at TPMCafe for the Iowa Caucus. Join in.

The eight-year con law seminar that is the Bush Administration continues!

Today’s lesson: the pocket veto.

I’m just pulling together the different threads here, but it’s really starting to seem like the second choice factor could end up being the big story tonight in the Democratic side of the ledger. It’s starting to seem like almost all the candidates are either choosing to expressly direct their supporters to caucus for Obama as their second choice, are implicitly doing so or are simply expecting that that’s what they’ll do. Probably almost 20% of the caucus electorate remains either undecided or supporting a candidate not likely to reach the viability threshold. So that’s a lot of support that could potentially swing in Obama’s direction.

This morning Eric Kleefeld called up Zogby and asked what his tracking numbers looked like when the second-choices were factored in and reallocated amongst the candidates the numbers went from …

Obama 31%, Edwards 27%, Clinton 24%

to

Obama 37.5%, Edwards 33.7%, Clinton 28.8%

Is John Durham the “second coming of Patrick Fitzgerald“?

All indications are that Durham, a registered Republican, is a competent, independent, tough-minded prosecutor, precisely the type of lawyer you would want leading such a high-profile, complex, politically charged investigation.

But the investigation may be circumscribed from the beginning, not because Durham himself is somehow compromised personally, but because his brief is limited to investigating the destruction of the CIA torture tapes–not what’s actually contained on the tapes themselves, which reportedly depict the use of the most extreme “enhanced interrogation techniques” ordered by the White House.

Attorney General Michael Mukasey’s announcement yesterday of Durham’s appointment as acting U.S. attorney specifically referred only to the destruction of the tapes:

Following a preliminary inquiry into the destruction by CIA personnel of videotapes of detainee interrogations, the Department’s National Security Division has recommended, and I have concluded, that there is a basis for initiating a criminal investigation of this matter, and I have taken steps to begin that investigation as outlined below.

The New York Times report today similarly suggests that the destruction of the tapes is the focus of the investigation:

Justice Department officials declined to specify what crimes might be under investigation, but government lawyers have said the inquiry will probably focus on whether the destruction of the tapes involved criminal obstruction of justice and related false-statement offenses.

It’s simply not clear whether Mukasey has charged Durham with investigating only the tapes’ destruction, although that’s how House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) reads it:

Equally disappointing is the limited scope of this investigation, which appears limited to the destruction of two tapes. The government needs to scrutinize what other evidence may have been destroyed beyond the two tapes, as well as the underlying allegations of misconduct associated with the interrogations.

Whether the CIA failed to preserve the tapes pursuant to one or more federal court orders or to turn them over to the 9/11 Commission are serious and legitimate questions. But the larger issue here is torture. At the end of the day, that’s what this is all about. And a federal criminal investigation that ignores or overlooks the conduct allegedly depicted on the tapes would do as much damage to the rule of law as the state-ordered torture did in the first place.